Bush's Colonoscopy

Exclusive Photos...


I was just sitting here reading about President Bush handing over the keys to Airforce One today while they do a little video work on his rear end, and it occurred to me to wonder what the test might find and how the NY Times would report the outcome.

First of all, here's a few photos of a normal colon:





And here's a look at the insides of our chief executive:





It's no wonder his ass has been bothering him.

(Yes, I came up with the idea all by my wittle self, and the photoshop work only took a half hour...)

I'm Surrounded!!!

Nobody Move...


I was sitting here minding my own business, waiting on a friend to come in from the airport, when I looked up and found this scene surrounding me in my living room as I check the weather and write this evening (as usual, click to enlarge.):



All I have to do is bark and I cause pandemonium...

100 Degrees Fahrenheit

And I'll Be There...


Well, I'm getting ready to pack up a few gallons of Gatorade and swim over to Brunswick to do some more construction work this morning.

I say "swim" because the air is so thick you can cut it with a knife, and the Weather Wench on the Weather Channel just told me that the forecast high will be somewhere near the combustion temperature of human flesh near 100 degrees F today over on the mainland.

Things weren't much cooler here on our little island yesterday, as our teen aged guests and their mother (the woman that told me that they routinely had no trouble staying out all afternoon on the beach normally) were begging me to abandon our spot out on East Beach yesterday afternoon by about 12:45 PM.

What?

We only arrived at the beach at a little after 11 AM and all the veteran beach bums (including Pat) except me wanted to go home?

So we did.

As is usual, my Missy, the "Turbo Pup", made the most of the day and had the best time--sitting on all of the chairs and spreading sand on all of the beach towels.

Here's a couple of pics showing her progress getting wet and dirty (click to enlarge):









The good news is that the Norton/Symantic guy got back with me and set up a conference call for Monday morning, and he also GAVE me a free download of the new Norton AntiBot software which I managed to get installed and thus far seems to exorcised my computer's demons.

Of course I could come home this afternoon and have floating beds and rotating heads and pea soup vomit all over the living room around the computer...

I just don't know what to expect any more around here.

The Atlanta Falcons

Crappy Then...Still Crappy Now...


Being from lower Alabama, I grew up watching mainly college football and the local high school football team because the nearest NFL franchises were in New Orleans, Tampa Bay, and Atlanta.

Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee, North & South Carolina, Kentucky, and most of the rest of the Midwest and the Mississippi River flood plain had to watch pro football on television if they actually wanted to SEE a pro football game, unlike people living in Pittsburgh, Green Bay, and NYC.

Even today my great birth state of Alabama still has but three football teams of note--THE University of Alabama "Crimson Tide", the Auburn "Tigers", and most recently the NCAA Division IA Troy State University "Trojans."

I think that you'd agree with me when I say that Alabamians love their college football, although things have never been quite the same since Bear Bryant died back in the 1980's.

Georgia, of course, still has their own mediocre Atlanta Falcons team.

When I moved to Atlanta in 1977 to attend Georgia Tech, the Falcons stadium was but a few miles south of my dorm room, but try as I might I just couldn't manage to become a serious Falcons fan.

You see, the Atlanta Falcons totally SUCKED because the Smith family heir, "baby bubba Smith," had owned the team since the franchise was first awarded and the City of Atlanta stole the money from the taxpayers to build a stadium, and all Mr. Smith cared about was chasing strange women and keeping the status "quo."

Quarterback Steve Bartkowski and running back/receivers William Andrews and Alfred Jenkins had their moments, but after sitting in the stadium in a 20 degree Arctic cold blast watching their 1980 NFC Division playoff loss to the Dallas Cowboys in January 1981, I think that I've attended maybe three Falcons games and watched about the same number on television.

When "baby bubba Smith's" antics finally embarrassed his family name enough and Arthur Blank threw out enough money to cause him to sell the Falcon franchise in 2002, all of my delirious wild eyed friends lambasted me with commentary about how the Falcons were going to become a dynasty like the Atlanta Braves were in Baseball.

All I could do is yawn.

When Mr. Blank tossed Virginia Tech QB Michael Vick a ten year $130 million deal, the City of Atlanta and the Atlanta media started gassing up their cars and buying Super Bowl tickets.

All I could do was smirk.

Today, following Mr. Vick's indictment on Dog Fighting charges, I offer a hearty:

I TOLD YOU ALL SO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I've said from the start that Michael Vick was nothing but a highly overpaid THUG--sort of a version of NBA Player lite. He had enough savvy to mostly keep his mouth shut, but when it came time to perform on the field he was all smoke and mirrors, and today's Atlanta Falcon's, like the Falcons of the 1970's, still can't put together a Super Bowl Team with just a pretty good quarterback surrounded by a bunch of "has beens" and "wanna be's."

I don't just question Vick's judgment here, I question the entire culture that permeates college and professional sports.

Thugs and Gangsters...

Gangsters and Gold chain adorned Thugs.

(And one huge dumbass that's made $13 million dollars a year for the past five years and spends his time betting on dogs killing each other.)

Aviation Politics

More Bitching About Trying To Fly...


I know that I've mentioned many times before that I was once a bit of a half-assed airplane pilot.

In loosely describing myself as a pilot, I mean that I knew enough to manage to untie the airplane from the tarmac, start the engine, and flop around in the air for an hour or so burning a few gallons of 100 octane low lead gasoline.

Unfortunately, I never managed to actually GO ANYWHERE with my aviation efforts because of FAA intervention. My wife at the time was quite happy with the cost savings realized by my administrative grounding, but I was rather pissed off with the turn of events at the time.

I had the displeasure of learning that the Federal Aviation Administration--a 1950's creation of President Eisenhower--being a government entity, basically has nothing to do all day but waste money and issue mandates.

In my case, it was the "issuing of mandates" that ended my flying career.

You see, the FAA apparently hates the AMA (American Medical Association) and the FDA (the Food and Drug Administration), because if you so much as take an Aspirin or buy a tube of Preparation H and they hear about it, they will unilaterally ground your aching head and ass and on the ground you will sit for the rest of your life (unless you let Delta or United pilots do your flying for you.)

In my case, it was the anticoagulant drug Coumadine that was the source of my flying demise. That, and the crappy blood circulation problems that I've periodically experienced in my legs and abdomen.

So any way, last evening the Brazilians suffered a major airline crash at what is called Brazil's "busiest airport."

SAO PAULO, Brazil (CNN) -- A jetliner crashed and exploded into flames at Brazil's busiest airport on Tuesday night, killing at least 200 people, local rescue workers said.

As investigators prepared to open a probe into the cause of the crash of the TAM Airlines Airbus A320, questions were being raised about both the growth in Brazilian air traffic and Sao Paulo's Congonhas Airport.

The Sao Paulo fire department said at least 200 people, including some on the ground, were dead at the scene. The figure would make Tuesday's crash Brazil's deadliest air disaster.
Brazil President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva declared three days of national morning for the victims.

Witnesses said the plane skidded across a major road at rush hour. Reports that the plane struck a gas station could not be confirmed, but a massive fire broke out.

The crash happened in a driving rain, and the plane apparently struck a building bearing the airline's logo at the small domestic airport in the heart of the city. At least 50 rescue vehicles were at the scene, firefighters said. The fire continued to burn into the night.

I did a little checking and was astonished at what I found out in the process.

THESE CRAZY BRAZILIANS ARE ROUTINELY LANDING BIG AIRPLANES ON A RUNWAY THAT'S ONLY 6,362 FEET LONG!!!

For those of you that graduated from the University of Georgia, that's only a little over three football fields longer than a mile--or about 22 football fields worth of asphalt and concrete.

Most airfields serving commercial jetliners have runways that are at LEAST 10,000 feet long, and may have twelve or fourteen thousand feet of pavement, depending on the service requirements of their customers.

Further, the Sao Paulo Congonhas airport is 2,631 feet above sea level, another performance problem when it comes to pushing a metal wing through the altitude thinned air.

What amazes me is that Sao Paulo also has Gaurulhos International Airport sitting just a few miles to the northeast that has nearly double the runway--12,140 feet--and yet the other airport is the busiest.

Using Chicago as a reference, if it were me, and I were flying around in a shiny aluminum tube with wings in Brazil, I'd make a conscious choice to go into Sao Paulo's "O'Hare" rather than enjoying the convenience of their "Midway" airport if I was interested in landing in foul weather and managing to make it back home in one piece.

I guarantee you that there is some kind of government bullshit political situation behind allowing the airport with the smaller runway to handle most of commercial air traffic.

I'd be looking up the pants leg of the President and the Mayor and the so-called "aviation officials" because someone other than the pilot is responsible for setting this situation up in the first place.

I'm A Terrible Employee

And An Even Worse Employer...


I hate to admit that I took an unscheduled "mental health holiday" from my job site yesterday. I was taking an early morning nap as 7, 8, 9, and 10 AM came and went and only by 11 AM did I manage to drag my rear end out of the bed and into the living room in front of the computer screen.

I feel a bit guilty for letting two days slip by without getting anything done, but when the heat index hit 110 degrees F I understood that my indiscretion was probably justified.

I'll make it up by getting a really early start this morning before eight and possibly tossing in an extra hour or so on the end of the schedule.

If I can finish the woodwork on the soffits and fascias today I'll be happy with the week's progress, because we have family coming into town and Pat has the rest of the week off and I want to be able to enjoy cooking dinner for eight family and friends tomorrow night.

I think that my soon to be famous Chicken Piccata will be on the menu, and possibly some Key Lime Pie for desert. This will be our last opportunity to entertain here in our Sea Palms Condo since everything has to be packed into boxes and moved into a truck for the cross island move we're making the first week in August.

I am NOT looking forward to this move, but the good news is that it's been over three years since the last one and the extra space afforded in the new house will certainly make things worth while once the dust settles.

I'm excited to be getting my own studio space in the new building where I can keep my photo and artwork supplies set up and at hand for use rather than having to stash the watercolors when I'm working on pen & ink drawings and having to put everything up when we have company.

I'm interested in getting into stained glass work and doing some ceramic pottery and other clay sculpture, so having the space to allow things to stay accessible for a couple hours of work each day should greatly increase my output and productivity.

I have at LEAST a half dozen artwork projects already started that need to be followed up on inculding marketing some prints of my pen & ink work and getting a few dozen finished works matted and framed for display and possible sale.

Working on the kitchen table and the coffee table just hasn't been condusive to getting past the prototype stage on my efforts.

OK, time for a quick snooze, then it's back to the grindstone for a half day...

As Of July 17th, The 2007 Hurricane Season Is Still A Bust...

Al Gore Changing His Panties Boxers


Heh...

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Dirty Jobs

Mike Rowe I Ain't....


I just LOVE watching Mike Rowe's show DIRTY JOBS on the Discover Channel.

It's right up there with Deadliest Catch and the History Channel's Ice Road Truckers on my list of TV shows I can't pass up once the remote control has scanned across their broadcast.

Tonight Mike was doing a little work with a Terminte exterminating company and chipping hardened concrete out of concrete delivery trucks. I've also seen him squeezing poop out of baby chickens and pumping out septic tanks, but he does everything with style and a good deal of humor while telling stories about things even I have never seen or thought about doing.

It's a good thing that a TV crew hasn't shown up on my job site to film some of the things that have gone on there since I started work back in May.

On second thought, I guess that the Comedy Channel might be interested--maybe I should make a few phone calls.

Air Conditioned Interior

Still Hot Under The Collar...


Well, I crossed yet another construction milestone on Sunday, completing the installation of a couple of tons of electric heatpump equipment mounted through the wall of what will be the living room in the final floor plan configuration. I think that the 1959 vintage structure actually shuttered with surprise as the the cool air hit it's 47 year old concrete and timbers.

There's still a breakfast bar, kitchen sink, and old refrigerator sitting around my new modern convienance--but those items will be exiting the facility in the next construction dumpster, finally completing the transition from a duplex to a single family residence.

My thinking is that with this improvement, the interior work can be completed in civilized, mosquito-free conditions. No more stopping to wipe the sweat off my safety glasses and out of my eyes every two minutes. That's the reason I changed my schedule and accelerated the AC installation by an entire month.

James and I spent the final fifteen minutes of our workday sitting in front of the AC vents, drinking a couple of cold Hinekin beers in celebaration of our accomplishment, knowing that even when our day's work involves soffits and fascias or metal roof panels outside, that we can always come INSIDE to take a break from the 100+ degree F heat index coastal weather.

Here at home on the computer front, my HP laptop is still paralysed with Internet blindness, although the CAD software and other programs seem to be working OK thus far. Needless to say I'll be on the telephone first thing this morning--I hope that they follow up with their earlier offer of personalized support assistance because their Norton 360 software absolutely refuses to find any problem currently.

Be advised that if you are one of these weasels that takes pleasure in writing maliscious software code designed to break into complete strangers expensive hardware, and I EVER find you, I will take great pleasure in risking the legal consequences of thrashing you within inches of your miserable life.

Everyone GOT THAT???

Electronic Paralysis

My Virus Is Back


I borrowed Pat's computer, unplugged it from it's docking station, and dragged it into the living room this evening long enough to write and let the world know that my little digital visitor has taken over my machine and will not allow me to access the internet.

I'm gonna sit here and thrash around, do some reading, then get to bed in anticipation of another four or five hours slaving in the heat Sunday like I did on Saturday.

Please pray that the Norton people can exorcise my demon(s) on Monday...

Friday the 13th

Will Someone Please Call PETA?


I went fishing this morning about 7:30 AM, and in addition to giving away about a dozen shrimp to some unseen tiny fish, I also managed to snag this little guy in the eye in the process.



I resisted giving him/her mouth to mouth rescusitation, but when I turned him/her loose, he/she insisted on doing nothing but swimming upside down while the local minnows swarmed around asking "are you my Mommy?"

Media Bullshit

More Journalistic Incompetence


Let me offer to you my sincerest condolences if your little darlin' is going to college to study for a so called Journalism degree, because in my opinion you have or will be subjecting them to the collegiate equivalent of a "frontal lobotomy" in the four year process.

At least that's the way things seem to work when you look at the crap that gets published by supposedly reputable purveyors of news and information--generally trying to tell the public what is going on out there in the world.

Some of the stuff is so insane that it has to be intentional, not accidental, in my opinion.

Take this week's story by the BBC about the Queen of England walking out on a photo shoot with spazzy looking pop-culture photographer Annie Leibovitz.

LONDON - The British Broadcasting Corp. apologized to Queen Elizabeth II on Thursday for saying she had walked out of portrait sitting with photographer Annie Leibovitz.

The BBC said a promotional trailer released Wednesday from the upcoming documentary, "A Year With the Queen," showed the monarch arriving, not departing.

That scene showed the queen walking down a Buckingham Palace corridor, wearing a crown and her Order of the Garter robes, and telling her lady-in-waiting: "I'm not changing anything. I've had enough dressing like this, thank you very much."

"In this trailer, there is a sequence that implies that the queen left a sitting prematurely," the BBC said.

"This was not the case, and the actual sequence of events was misrepresented. The BBC would like to apologize to both the queen and Annie Leibovitz for any upset this may have caused."

The promotional video showed the queen balking at the photographer's request that she remove her crown.

Here's the story from the BBC Website.

I have to ask how in the heck stuff like this can make it through an entire production process and onto the air and into newspapers in the first place?

I have little empathy for the Queen or the Queen's feelings because I don't give beans about royalty or celebrities (Lady Di is still dead and I still haven't shed a single tear), but seriously, who are these morons and why do they still have jobs this morning after letting something this inaccurate be shown in public?

After all, you don't have to go to college and spend four years of your life and tens of thousands of dollars (or Euros or pounds) of your parent's money in order to know the difference between RIGHT and WRONG, do you?

Peter Pan

The "Valuejet" Of The Peanut Butter Business...


Well, I just finished eating a nice "Jiff" peanut butter sandwich this morning in anticipation of making an early morning trip over to Lowes' to pick up some supplies for today's construction session.

I topped my fake peanut butter sandwich off with a nice glass of some 1/2% milk that Pat insists on buying, augmented with some of my "fake half & half" which I rescued at the last minute from last evening's trashcan because I wanted to actually taste the product in order to thoroughly condemn it in my writing.

Let's just say that the experience was almost satisfying.

I HATE Jiffy and Jiff and Barfy and Biff and any other form of peanut butter other than the original, the best, the only brand that has voluntarily graced the shelves of my family's pantry since at least 1959....

PETER PAN PEANUT BUTTER.

Of course, just in case you were living in a cave or doing time on the International Space Station over the past six months or so you would know that Conagra Foods had a little problem with some salmonella contamination last winter and as a result they had to recall all of the Peter pan Peanut Butter on the entire planet.

Every single jar, EXCEPT the one that is still happily residing in my pantry this morning.

The only problem for me is that there is only a couple of spoons full of peanut butter left in the jar, and as a result I'm hanging onto the jar and the peanut butter contained therein until I can again buy a new jar.

I may just start some kind of shrine in my home and place my jar of Peter Pan Peanut Butter right there in the middle.

In checking the Conagrafoods Website, I found that in fact the Sylvester, Georgia plant responsible for converting south Georgia and south Alabama peanuts into my beloved creamy, smooth, peanut butter like I've eaten nearly my body weight in over each and every one of the past 47 years, is being rebuilt and will be back on line later this summer.

Of course the public , in their normal Lemming fashion, has stampeded away from not only the Peter Pan brand, but in some cases every brand of peanut butter over the past few months.

I just hope that they don't cave in to public opinion and change the name of the peanut butter or do a Coke maneuver and try to change the formulation in this revitalization process.

I want my peanut butter back on the store shelves, with the same label, even though it is in a plastic jar rather than a glass jar like in the old days.

Remember back in the mid 1990's when a little southern airline called Valuejet had a DC-9 take a nosedive into the Everglades outside of Miami?

Practically everyone I know was freaking out as I continued to happily fly with Valuejet and enjoy the savings on flights out of Atlanta over the fares charged by Delta and the other major airlines.

Today that little airline is known as Airtran, and today Airtran has one of the most modern fleets of aircraft in the industry. They also haven't lost a single other airplane since that fateful day in 1995.

I intend to apply the same strategy in making decisions regarding Peanut Butter that I employed in selecting an airline...

Keep the Status Quo...

So my advise to you is to go out and buy yourself some Conagra stock, and while you're at it, would someone buy me a couple of cases of Peter Pan Peanut Butter?

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I've Got My Balloons

Now Where's My Helium?


One of my Blog Idols, Roger, over at Curmudgeonly & Skeptical, mentioned this FOX news story about a guy attaching a bunch of helium balloons to a lawn chair and taking a little flight across country.

BEND, Ore. — Last weekend, Kent Couch settled down in his lawn chair with some snacks — and a parachute. Attached to his lawn chair were 105 large helium balloons.

Destination: Idaho.

With instruments to measure his altitude and speed, a global positioning system device in his pocket, and about four plastic bags holding five gallons of water each to act as ballast — he could turn a spigot, release water and rise — Couch headed into the Oregon sky.

Nearly nine hours later, the 47-year-old gas station owner came back to earth in a farmer's field near Union, short of Idaho but about 193 miles from home.

Is that not cool as heck...or what?

Of course, as has become to be usual, Mr. Couch and his amazing flying lawn chair risked the wrath of the imperial Federal Government of The United By God States Of America in making his little expedition--IF he had violated any "controlled airspace" coming under the jurisdiction of the FAA:

Couch is the latest American to emulate Larry Walters — who in 1982 rose three miles above Los Angeles in a lawn chair lifted by balloons. Walters had surprised an airline pilot, who radioed the control tower that he had just passed a guy in a lawn chair. Walters paid a $1,500 penalty for violating air traffic rules.

That was one of the things that bothered me the most back in the days when I was still flying an airplane..."controlled airspace."

It just wasn't over places like airports and the Pentagon, today it includes places like football stadiums and Disney world, and if just the act of successfully taking off and flying an airplane isn't difficult enough, now the government makes three quarters of the country off limits if you are flying anywhere under the altitude of what is usually described as "orbit."

I swear to God if I were twenty again I'd be tempted to strap a few dozen big balloons to my new bike and take a similar trip myself.

Fortunately, for my Mother and the FAA, I'm way past twenty and will be spending my day tomorrow at my construction job site, and the highest I'll be getting off the ground will be when I'm up fooling around on the roof finishing doing some cleaning in anticipation of installing some new metal panels.

I'm sweating just thinking about the process...

Anniversaries

July 11th


I just noticed the calendar date, and I have to mention that on July 11th, 1981 I was standing at a church altar in Winston Salem, NC serving as one of my good friend Andy's groomsmen, and I guess that means that he and Laura are celebrating 26 years today.

I'll have to give them a call later this morning and see if Andy is in Europe on business or at home for the occasion.

Next, on July 11th, 1985, I found myself sitting in a lawyer's office in the Atlanta suburbs signing the closing documents on my first house purchase, a little place that I called home for two and one half years and made a tidy profit on in the process before designing and building another house to hold me and my cars and boat.

Dang I feel old...

Fat Free Half & Half?

More Consumer Fraud...


Everyone that knows me or that reads this blog regularly knows that I'm what I call a "grocerystoreaholic."

You see, I find it hard to pass a grocery store without going inside to look at the produce section and the meat counter.

I admit that I'll often go into the grocery store under the guise of only buying a newspaper and a loaf of bread and come out with a $150 whole beef tenderloin that was on sale for $100 and ten cans of beef and chicken broth (also on sale), and possibly some kind of kitchen gadget that was sitting by the checkout in a clearance rack.

I just can't help myself, and I'm NOT sorry for my affliction.

On Monday I ran into our local Harris Teeter on just such an excursion--needing a newspaper and a few other things--while Pat and Missy "the Turbo Pup" sat outside in the car enjoying the air conditioning. On this particular trip I actually managed to stay within the boundaries of my shopping list with a singular exception...

Instead of buying real Half & Half for my coffee, I just noticed that I managed to come home with something called Harris Teeter's Brand "Fat Free" Half and Half.

What the heck?

The label touts that the little pint carton contains "63% less calories than original Half & Half."

But wait a minute here...

I actually WANT liquid with lots of fat in it... THAT'S WHY I WANTED TO BUY "HALF & HALF" in the first place.

I guess that you could say that I've acquired something akin to the cubic zirconium of the dairy isle. I can hardly wait for them to come out with "Chicken Free" chicken, "Fish Free" fish, "Pork Free" pork, and "Beef Free" beef.

Wait another minute...they already have those products and they call it...

Get ready...

TOFU!!!

Taking a big breath...

Upon further investigation I found the US Food and Drug Administration Section 138-180 Half-and-Half description of what REAL "Half & Half" should be:

Subpart B--Requirements for Specific Standardized Milk and Cream

Sec. 131.180 Half-and-half.

(a) Description. Half-and-half is the food consisting of a mixture of milk and cream which contains not less than 10.5 percent but less than 18 percent milkfat. It is pasteurized or ultra-pasteurized, and may be homogenized.

(b) Optional ingredients. The following safe and suitable optional ingredients may be used:

(1) Emulsifiers.

(2) Stabilizers.

(3) Nutritive sweeteners.

(4) Characterizing flavoring ingredients (with or without coloring) as follows:

(i) Fruit and fruit juice (including concentrated fruit and fruit juice).

(ii) Natural and artificial food flavoring.


Get that?

Now here is what my errant purchase--my "Fat Free" Half & Half contains--according to the label:

Nonfat Milk Cream
Sugar
Corn Syrup
Sodium Caseinate
Artificial Color
Artificial flavor
Dipotassium Phosphate
Carrageenan
Vitamin A
Palimitate

I most definitely have a deficiency of Carrageenan and Palimitate in my diet and I didn't even know that I needed any in the first place.

Lucky me.

And I guess that the really good news is that my "Fat Free" Half & Half is "Ultra-Pasteurized."

Pause...(Que the the sounds of crickets chirping)

AaaaaaahhhhhhHHHHHHHH.....Why the heck would ANYONE buy this stuff in the first place?

Why not just buy 1/2% milk and be done with the decision making process. After all, it's much cheaper per ounce, and while you're at it, take home a carton of fake eggs and some fake butter, if you will.

As I've said over and over and over in the past...I WILL DIE OF SOMETHING one day!

I demand that I be allowed to determine the cause of my death myself, and it will probably be red meat and various forms of fat.

I just threw my little unopened carton of "Fat Free" Half & Half into the kitchen trashcan.

I guess that, in the future, I need to start reading the labels a little more closely, no matter how exasperated my fellow shoppers make me in the process.


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That's Global Warming?

"Mother Earth" Apparently Has A Strange Sense Of Humor...


Don't tell perennial Global Warming Guru Al Gore, but yesterday it snowed down in Buenos Aires for the first time since 1918.

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina - Thousands of Argentines cheered and threw snowballs in the streets of Buenos Aires on Monday as the capital's first major snowfall since 1918 spread a thin white mantle across the region...

The snow followed a bitter cold snap in late May that saw subfreezing temperatures, the coldest in 40 years in Buenos Aires. That cold wave contributed to an energy crisis and 23 deaths from exposure.

I guess that being in the weather business could be considered to be a dangerous profession these days, because the folks down at the National Hurricane Center had an uprising and tossed out their leader over some kind of internal disagreement.

Like everything else in our society, I wish that the technicians would be allowed to do their respective jobs and the politicians and bureaucrats would just shut up and get the heck out of the way.

Know what I mean???

Dust About To Rise Again

Writing Suffering


Sorry about the light posting recently, but I'm up to my eyeballs in CAD work again, and making decisions related to spending another three or four thousand dollars on the materials and services for the Duplex construction project is taking up a good deal of time & energy.

Today was a design and planning day spent hiding inside in front of the computer, leering at the swimming pool but refusing to endure the heat in the process of walking over and sitting down outside. Our heat index was near 110 by mid afternoon.

My Saturday meeting with the real estate guy confirmed a new hunch I had that I was over-doing things by going to the trouble to make the four foot addition on the rear of the building in order to increase the size of the two rear bedrooms.

As things currently stand on the floor plan, my buyers or their new tenants will just have to make do with queen sized beds and keep their tuxedos and twenty extra Gucci suits in storage because the small existing closets in the existing 10 x 12 foot bedrooms are staying as they are.

I'm still blowing out half of the concrete block front wall to accommodate increasing the size of the living/dining area however, so tomorrow we're building the form work needed to thicken half of the 6' wide front porch slab by 2".

That means that I need so little concrete (about 1/2 a cubic yard), that the concrete companies won't deliver for me, so I'm going to have the thrill of renting a portable cement mixer and tossing around a bakers dozen bags of sackrete on Thursday.

I'm also having the first of two 10 cubic yard dumpsters delivered tomorrow morning and loading up all of the lumber and concrete blocks that we've thus far removed from the building in our earlier efforts. I can't allow the dumpster to sit around very long or the locals will fill it with dirty diapers, watermelon rines, and chicken bones and I'll get a fine for violating the "construction debris only" policy that my dump fee pricing is based on.

My earlier reference to "we" and "our" includes my new man Friday (actually James), the homeless guy, that I've adopted as my assistant and who's been showing up pretty regularly to work for three or four hours each session at $10 per hour. If he keeps his shoulder to the grindstone and his nose clean I just may let him become an unofficial resident for a short time for security purposes and my own convenience.

I still have to think about that option however. It's just hard to send him off each day back to the streets and the shelters because he has a great attitude and he works like a slave (no insult intended) and I could really rest easier when I start having to leave expensive things laying around in that building in that neighborhood overnight or over the weekend unattended.

Thus far I've had to unload and load all of my power tools and hand tools from the Suburban into the building on EACH AND EVERY VISIT. The only things I leave lying around is stuff like screws, nails, my shop vac, a couple of ladders, and safety gear like glasses and boxes of ear plugs.

I figure that some guy seen clomping down the road dragging a red Craftsman shopvac by the power cord, toting an orange 12' fiberglass stepladder on one arm, wearing blue framed safety goggles, a stack of paper respirator masks, and pink foam ear plugs will attract enough attention to at least make the newspaper if not awaken the local authorities from their slovenly slumber.

Of course someone could back a pickup truck up into my driveway and just break in and haul the supplies away like they did my kitchen sink a few years ago, but so far the omnipresent floodlights I installed on the front of the building have kept the indigenous kleptomaniacs away.

Any way, this week should see the final framing and floor plan take shape so I can move on to electrical, plumbing, and installing the new metal roofing panels over the old roof.

I want this thing completed and on the market by September 1st, and I'm not getting any younger in the process so I press onward in the near 100 degree F heat.

I think I'll go buy some stock in Gatoraide while I'm at it...

I'm their best customer right now.

Who Are These People?

Legalized Littering


Yesterday I was wandering around aimlessly here on the property, taking out the trash and putting some things into our carport storage locker, when I noticed this guy with a van full of what I call "Fake Phonebooks."

You know--Fake Phonebooks--those published by some entity other than the telephone company.

Any way, this dude proceeds to toss one out into each and every covered parking space, then he comes around the building with a load in his arms and plops them down in front of our mail boxes.

One has to ask the question: "Does he think that we have some kind of third class residents that don't own a parking space but get their mail delivered here?

Obviously this rocket scientist gets paid by the book to empty his van each day, and his employers (the "Fake Phone Book Publisher") doesn't have any mechanism to verify that he's not giving each of his involuntary recipients more that one copy.

We get a couple of odd newspapers and "trader magazines" thrown out on our carport a few times each month. They all end up laying around getting wet from the rain and festering and rotting until I get tired of them, realise that "current resident" means ME, and I kick them over to the trash bin because they're too gross to pick up with my hands.

That's OK, our maintenance guy will enjoy hauling the big pile of "fake phonebooks" that I'm putting into the trash this evening.

Can anyone tell me the difference between literature distribution, advertising, and littering?

Why Did They Pick Here?

Multi-State Crime Spree Comes To Town


I didn't mention this a few weeks ago when it occurred, but by some freak of chance St. Simons Island was chosen by this moron, Michael Woodbury, for inclusion in his cross country melee of murder, arson, forgery, and burglary committed over the past month.

You see, about the only thing that ever happens here on SSI is the occasional wife-beating or petty larceny, although we did have a bank robbery back in 2003 while I was visiting to complete a real estate deal.

I don't believe that there has been a murder here in the past dozen years, although Glynn county as a whole doesn't fare as well in that category.

Any way, Woodbury got out of jail this spring and, having not had enough time wearing prison pinstripes (and few working brain cells), took two female accomplices on a road trip to Florida from Maine, stopping here on our little island long enough to break into our buddy J Mac's multi-million dollar mansion out on East Beach. Stealing J Mac's stuff wasn't enough though, they had to set the house on fire and burn it to the ground.

I can't find a picture on the Internet, but there was nothing left but the chimney and a charred pile of rubble.

They caught the bastard last week back up in Maine, and if they don't fry him for the three murders he committed Glynn County will get a shot at adding more time to his prison sentence.

Mean while, J Mac's still in the restaurant business, and we'll be back down there Wednesday night to hear our neighbor play the Piano in the lounge.

I hope the international criminals stay away in the mean time.